This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
One wants to be an honest man; one is so, one works hard; but still one cannot make both ends meet; on must give up the work, there is no chance of carrying it out without spending more on it than one gets back for it; one gets a feeling of shortcomi
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.
Battle | Birth | Children | History | Imagination | Life | Life | Longing | Majority | Meaning | Men | Nothing | Talking | Thought | Will | Old | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess – he was a woman.
Genius | Good | Ideas | Immortality | Need | Rest | Story | Style | Will |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There's just this… an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.
Art | Better | Books | Criticism | Enough | Future | History | Hope | Means | Money | Past | Philosophy | Poetry | Research | Thought | Will | Art | Thought |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
History | Opposition | Story |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
To possess one single thing (it is Louis now) must waver, like the light in and out of the beech leaves; and then words, moving darkly, in the depths of your mind will break up this knot of hardness, screwed in your pocket-handkerchief.
Ideas |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Everyone is nothing but a collection of wild ideas. See them this way.
Ideas |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
What exactly is suffering? Our pains are caused by our wrong viewpoints toward things. The false self throws up an imaginary picture of how it insists things should be. And every time this 'should be' clashes with what actually happens, we react painfully. The problem is not what actually happens, but our demands that something else should happen. Don't take my word for this; experiment for yourself.
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
How small man is on this little atom where he dies! But how great his intelligence! He knows when the face of the stars must be masked in darkness, when the comets will return after thousands of years, he who lasts only an instant! A microscopic insect lost in a fold of the heavenly robe, the orbs cannot hide from him a single one of their movements in the depth of space. What destinies will those stars, new to us, light? Is their revelation bound up with some new phase of humanity? You will know, race to be born; I know not, and I am departing.
History |
François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
The heart is like the tree that given balm for the wounds of man only when the iron has pierced it.
History |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
We can accept God becoming man to save man, but not man becoming god to save himself.